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Wednesday, 8 November 2017

Shifting Blame as US Agenda Unfolds in Myanmar

As violence continues to unfold in Myanmar's western Rakhine state
against the nation's Rohingya ethnic minority, the agenda driving the
conflict is likewise unfolding in a more transparent and direct manner.

...we’re extraordinarily
concerned by what’s happening with the Rohingya in Burma. I’ve been in
contact with Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the civilian side of the
government. As you know, this is a power-sharing government that has –
that has emerged in Burma. We really hold the military leadership
accountable for what’s happening with the Rakhine area.

More than 40 lawmakers urged the
Trump administration on Wednesday to reimpose U.S. travel bans on
Myanmar’s military leaders and prepare targeted sanctions against those
responsible for a crackdown on the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.

In less than two months, more
than half a million Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh to
escape the destruction of entire settlements, systematic rape, and the
mass slaughter of men, women, and children. This horrendous violence is
perpetrated by the military, with assistance from elements of the local
Rakhine Buddhist population.

It is clear that the confined nature
of Myanmar's ongoing Rohingya crisis will not lead to the same type of
nationwide militancy observed in Syria. It is also clear that the United
States is likewise confining its condemnation for the violence not to
the ultra-violent elements that it cultivated under Suu Kyi's political
movement for decades, but on the military who often stood between
Rohingya communities and violent onslaughts.

The pressuring and weakening
first, then either co-opting or overthrowing of Myanmar's current
military leadership under the pretext of the current crisis will invite a
larger and expanding US and European role in Myanmar's internal
affairs. Secretary Tillerson alluded to precisely that in his recent
remarks, claiming:

And so we have been asking for
access to the region. We’ve been able to get a couple of our people from
our embassy into the region so we can begin to get our own firsthand
account of what is occurring. We’re encouraging access for the aid
agencies – the Red Cross, the Red Crescent – U.N. agencies to – so we
can at least address some of the most pressing humanitarian needs, but
more importantly so we can get a full understanding of what is going
on. Someone – if these reports are true,
someone is going to be held to account for that. And it’s up to the
military leadership of Burma to decide what direction do they want to
play in the future of Burma, because we see Burma as an important
emerging democracy, but this is a real test.

With US ally Saudi Arabia fueling a
militancy under the guise of a Rohingya "resistance," the US will also
be able to justify military aid, joint-operations, and even permanent US
military facilities - however meager - that will present a serious
obstacle to Chinese influence in the nation and in the region. It will
also be an obstacle that once erected, will be difficult to dismantle as America's enduring and unwanted military presence in the Philippines is proving to be. What's Really Happening in Myanmar

What Freedom House in its aforementioned report intentionally omits is that "the local Rakhine Buddhist population"
it refers to is actually part of a much larger political - not
religious - network that had fed saffron-clad "monks" onto the streets
for pro-Suu Kyi protests in 2007 and which has systematically thwarted efforts
by the military-led government before Suu Kyi's rise to power to begin
the process of granting Rohingya minorities proper legal and political
status within Myanmar.

It is also a political network that
has systematically abused, brutalized, and driven Myanmar's Rohingya
population first from their homes and businesses into camps, then from
camps to abroad in neighboring nations including Bangladesh and
Thailand.

While attempts to compare Myanmar's
crisis to ongoing conflict driven by US-backed regime change in Syria -
it is clear that Myanmar's crisis is more comparable to the US
occupation of Afghanistan minus the presence (for now) of US troops. While the United States and its
European partners control Myanmar's civilian government, the US is
attempting to divide and weaken the Myanmar state to corrode independent
institutions still beyond Wall Street and Washington's control, hinder
the central government from achieving any sort of independence itself,
as well as create a pretext for an initial and then expanded presence
of US missions - economically, diplomatically, and militarily - in
Myanmar. The goal - as it is in Afghanistan -
is to disrupt, undermine, and ultimately overturn progress China and
other alternative centers of global power have made in the two nations.
In particular, the highly confined violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state
is precisely where China sought to establish and use one of its One
Belt, One Road (OBOR) logistical hubs. America's Plans for its Myanmar Client State

Through a large US State Department and European-funded network
of faux-nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),Western-backed opposition
parties, and likewise Western-backed street fronts, Myanmar's current
client regime was successfully installed into power after general
elections in 2015. Prominent opposition party, the
National League for Democracy (NLD) assumed power of the government but
maintained little control over the nation's independent military.The NLD's party leader, Aung San Suu
Kyi, literally created a new political office for herself to occupy as
defacto "head of state." Under Myanmar's constitution Suu Kyi was barred
from holding high offices in the nation's political system due to her
marriage to a foreign spouse - a British man - and because her children
hold dual UK-Myanmar citizenship. Suu Kyi herself received a foreign
education and worked within Western institutions including the United
Nations in the US before returning to Myanmar to engage in domestic
politics.

Her entry into politics and her
ascension into power has been openly funded and backed by the United
States, former colonial ruler the United Kingdom, and a long list of
European collaborators, for decades. Many senior positions within
Myanmar's ruling regime are held by likewise products of extensive US
funding, training, indoctrination, and support, including the current Minister of Information Pe Myint. Just as the US controls the
government in Kabul, Afghanistan, it controls the civilian leadership
in Naypyidaw, Myanmar. And just as the US perpetuates the threat of
terrorism in Afghanistan as a pretext for the permanent US military
occupation of the Central Asian state, the US and its Saudi allies are
attempting to use the current Rohingya crisis as a vector to introduce a
foreign-funded militancy as a pretext first for joint
"counter-terrorism" cooperation with the government of Myanmar, and then
the permanent positioning of US military assets in a Southeast Asian
state that directly borders China - a long-term goal of US policymakers stretching back decades. It is expected that the military of
Myanmar will come under increasing pressure, targeted sanctions, and
outright threats until it capitulates, collapses, or manages to overcome
foreign influence and the client regime serving as a vector and
facilitator for them. Meanwhile, Suu Kyi's regime will
continue being granted relative impunity across the West despite the
fact that it is her own support base carrying out anti-Rohingya
violence. The crisis will be leveraged to thwart China's economic
inroads and prop up a burgeoning US-European diplomatic and military
presence in the country.

Voices across the media exposing US
plans will make it increasingly difficult for the US and its partners to
maneuver in Myanmar and give counterbalancing forces further leverage
in frustrating and rolling them back.